THE former lover of minicab driver Javid Malik told a jury yesterday he had offered her £10,000 to implicate the Khan family in his kidnap

allegation.

Three members of the family and a friend are accused of kidnapping Mr Malik but Tazeem Akthar told Reading Crown Court Mr Malik originally said a gang of black men had attacked him on Friday, July 27 last year.

She said days later the 34-year-old began including members of the wealthy Khan family - who own the food chain Medina Stores in Reading - in his allegations.

Miss Akthar told the court: "What really happened was some black people did something, he told me."

The court heard Mr Malik was treated in hospital for facial and back injures the morning after the alleged kidnap, telling doctors he had been in a pub brawl.

The prosecution alleges Mr Malik was kidnapped and beaten for information as to the whereabouts of Marian Begum, a member of the Khan family he was friends with who had run away from home.

But mother-of-two Ms Akthar - who thought she was going to marry Mr Malik before he met Miss Begum -told the court she was offered "£10,000 because I was going to help against the Medina Stores in the whole story".

Miss Begum, 20, who is now married to Mr Malik, had told the court she had fled her family's London Road home because her stepmother was beating her.

The court had also heard that her brother, Asif Khan, and uncle, Javid Farooq - who have gone into hiding - were leaders of the alleged kidnap gang that includes defendants Shakeel Kayani, 34, who is not related to the Khans, Zahid Shafi, 27, Raja Khan, 31, and Mehrban Ramzan, 29.

Miss Akthar said: "He [Javid Malik] knew everything going on with this Medina girl. Where she'd gone and everything, he knew but he told me, ‘do not tell anyone'."

In a letter to the investigating officers Miss Akthar claimed Mr Malik was a "dangerous" and "fraudulent" man who scared women into marrying him so he could stay in the country.

She claimed she had paid £2,000 to bail him out of an immigration detention centre and when she asked for it back he threatened her.

Her statement read: "Ever since I have found out what he is really like, so I write this letter to you Chief Inspector [of Reading Police] and the Home Office. Javid Malik is wasting taxpayers' money.

"Therefore I request to you and the Home Office that he does not get you trapped in his lies."

Miss Akthar claimed she knew he had lied because she had lived with him and seen him around women.

A later letter from February this year read: "During January to August last year Javid was staying with me at my home address of the last seven years. We were intimate and Javid often talked about our marriage."

But she said: "All along Javid was seeing another female behind my back.

"The reason he was seeing me was in order to stay in this country.

"When he realised he could marry another girl without children he took that option."

However, Paul Mitchell, prosecuting, who told the court her evidence was of no value, asked Miss Akthar if she had actually seen what had happened to Mr Malik that night.

She replied "no", explaining she had not heard from him from 4pm on July 27 until he returned home the next morning at about 9am.

Kayani, Khan, Shafi, all of London Road, and Mehrban Ramzan, of Pell Street, all deny a joint charge of kidnap and a further count of false imprisonment from July 27 to July 29 last year.

Shafi denies one count of actual bodily harm for the same period and Kayani, accused of doctoring work records to form an alibi, denies a charge of perverting the cause of justice from July 30